the song that was playing, but the bit he heard before the record ended was pretty good (if admittedly generic). â Put us three young men together, hey, and what are our jobs? â sang a guyâs voice. â To move your soul with rock ânâ roll! Weâre the Atomic Bobs! â
Benji thought about waking Papaw, who sometimes complainedabout a bad back whenever he fell asleep in his chair. But Papaw seemed okay there, his breathing steady and deep. Benji was intimately familiar with the sounds of Papawâs sleeping breaths, which had whispered through the vents between their bedrooms for as long as he could remember. Those breaths were calming in a way an awakened Papaw never was. Sometimes theyâd carry Benji, tidelike, to sleep.
Benji noticed a light on in the kitchen, farther down the hall. Papaw had left a handwritten note on their small, worn kitchen table. He did that a lot. Notes were pretty much their major form of communication. Text messages , Benji thought, from the pre-smartphone century .
The note read,
B ENJAMIN â
W EâLL TALK A LOT TMRW . G ET SOME SLEEP.
âS HERIFF R. L IGHTMAN (P APAW )
But Benji didnât think he was going to get much sleep at all.
Quoth the Internet Oracle (Wikipedia):
A flying saucer is a type of supposed flying craft with a saucer-shaped body. The term was coined in 1947, shortly after the first reported sighting. Saucer sightings were once very common, to such an extent that âflying saucerâ was a synonym for UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) through the early 1960s . . .
But after the early 1960s, Benji read on, saucer sightings inexplicably ended. UFOs were still reported, but the new sightings were literally and figuratively edgier and darker: jet-black, triangular crafts that inspired feelings of dread, which somehow made him doubt that they were real.
âCause I didnât feel that way when I saw the saucer. Why didnâtI, though? He didnât know. He didnât even quite understand the overpowering impulse to keep it, nor what he wanted to do with it. Maybe, if he would just learn more about saucers . . .
On his secondhand Dell laptop, he went to YouTube next, and found these old black-and-white newsreels about saucers. Somebody had remixed them with old doo-wop songs about aliens. Benji had always endured doo-wop (an early variety of rock ânâ roll where peopleâs voices not only sang the melody but also sometimes added nonsense words like âshoop-shee-doo-wopâ that mimicked instrument sounds), since it was one of the only kinds of music Papaw ever listened to. But Benji found himself really sort of liking it now. The melodies were simple, but damn, were they catchy. Also, there wasnât any Auto-Tune, so the singers sounded like humans instead of cyborgs.
And the era the songs came from just seemed so much friendlier and simple . The lyrics had this wonderstruck feeling, too, like I AM IN LOVE AND THIS IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT EVENT IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY. They didnât try to overexplain their feelings, and that was good, because that was how love actually was: You realize you love someone, and you only understand why later on.
Heart first, brain second.
It was kind of like magic that way. Benji understood why people wanted to know how tricks were done, but he knew from experience that when you try to dissect something amazing, you never find what youâre looking for.
Still eager for more information, he clicked onward.
Which led to clips of 1950s sci-fi movies. In the movies, the cardboard saucers wobbled on fishing lines, police were always oblivious and inept (Benji did not mind this at all), and teenagers were the Only Ones Who Can Save Civilization as We Know It. He spent more than an hour watching the clips. They werenâtprecisely educational programming, but he liked how all the younger characters seemed supremely sure of themselves, how they were so
Benji thought about waking Papaw, who sometimes complainedabout a bad back whenever he fell asleep in his chair. But Papaw seemed okay there, his breathing steady and deep. Benji was intimately familiar with the sounds of Papawâs sleeping breaths, which had whispered through the vents between their bedrooms for as long as he could remember. Those breaths were calming in a way an awakened Papaw never was. Sometimes theyâd carry Benji, tidelike, to sleep.
Benji noticed a light on in the kitchen, farther down the hall. Papaw had left a handwritten note on their small, worn kitchen table. He did that a lot. Notes were pretty much their major form of communication. Text messages , Benji thought, from the pre-smartphone century .
The note read,
B ENJAMIN â
W EâLL TALK A LOT TMRW . G ET SOME SLEEP.
âS HERIFF R. L IGHTMAN (P APAW )
But Benji didnât think he was going to get much sleep at all.
Quoth the Internet Oracle (Wikipedia):
A flying saucer is a type of supposed flying craft with a saucer-shaped body. The term was coined in 1947, shortly after the first reported sighting. Saucer sightings were once very common, to such an extent that âflying saucerâ was a synonym for UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) through the early 1960s . . .
But after the early 1960s, Benji read on, saucer sightings inexplicably ended. UFOs were still reported, but the new sightings were literally and figuratively edgier and darker: jet-black, triangular crafts that inspired feelings of dread, which somehow made him doubt that they were real.
âCause I didnât feel that way when I saw the saucer. Why didnâtI, though? He didnât know. He didnât even quite understand the overpowering impulse to keep it, nor what he wanted to do with it. Maybe, if he would just learn more about saucers . . .
On his secondhand Dell laptop, he went to YouTube next, and found these old black-and-white newsreels about saucers. Somebody had remixed them with old doo-wop songs about aliens. Benji had always endured doo-wop (an early variety of rock ânâ roll where peopleâs voices not only sang the melody but also sometimes added nonsense words like âshoop-shee-doo-wopâ that mimicked instrument sounds), since it was one of the only kinds of music Papaw ever listened to. But Benji found himself really sort of liking it now. The melodies were simple, but damn, were they catchy. Also, there wasnât any Auto-Tune, so the singers sounded like humans instead of cyborgs.
And the era the songs came from just seemed so much friendlier and simple . The lyrics had this wonderstruck feeling, too, like I AM IN LOVE AND THIS IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT EVENT IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY. They didnât try to overexplain their feelings, and that was good, because that was how love actually was: You realize you love someone, and you only understand why later on.
Heart first, brain second.
It was kind of like magic that way. Benji understood why people wanted to know how tricks were done, but he knew from experience that when you try to dissect something amazing, you never find what youâre looking for.
Still eager for more information, he clicked onward.
Which led to clips of 1950s sci-fi movies. In the movies, the cardboard saucers wobbled on fishing lines, police were always oblivious and inept (Benji did not mind this at all), and teenagers were the Only Ones Who Can Save Civilization as We Know It. He spent more than an hour watching the clips. They werenâtprecisely educational programming, but he liked how all the younger characters seemed supremely sure of themselves, how they were so
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